The making of elite women : revolution and nation building in Eritrea

(1)

The making of elite women : revolution and nation building in Eritrea

Müller, T.R.

Citation

Müller, T. R. (2005). The making of elite women : revolution and nation building in Eritrea. Brill, Leiden

[etc.]. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/12890

Version:

Not Applicable (or Unknown)

License:

Downloaded

from:

https://hdl.handle.net/1887/12890

(2)

BRILL BRILL www.brill.nl ISSN 1570-9310

A

F

R

I

K

A

-S

T

U

D

I

E

C

E

N

T

R

U

M

S

E

R

I

E

S

BRILL

Ta

nja

R

. M

üll

er

Th

e M

ak

in

g o

f E

lit

e W

om

en

A

F

R

I

K

A

-S

T

U

D

I

E

C

E

N

T

R

U

M

S

E

R

I

E

S

The Making of

Elite Women

Revolution and Nation Building in Eritrea

Tanja R. Müller

Centre d'Etudes Africaines

Afrika

Studie

centrum

African Studies Centre This book contains a thorough study of the upcoming of elite

women in Eritrea, encompassing the time of the armed struggle for liberation and its aftermath, up to the tenth anniversary of Eritrean independence in 2001 and beyond. The study is multi-disciplinary, combining a comprehensive analysis of Eritrean history, society and political developments with extensive case study research of the lives of different groups of elite women. Modernisation processes created by the Eritrean revolution, fostered an environment in which women are regarded as equal and are encouraged to occupy positions of leadership. At the same time, the revolution’s hegemonic ideology does not envisage women opting out of its version of modernity, thus new avenues open up only for those subscribing to the revolution’s narrative of progress. Furthermore, it is argued that while the Eritrean revolution played a decisive role in opening up possibilities for women’s emancipation, a failure to implement democratic structures of governance puts the revolution’s societal achievements at risk – its legacy might well rest with possibilities of personal liberation in individual lives.

Tanja R. Müller

(3)

(4)

Afrika-Studiecentrum Series

Editorial Board

Prof. Nicolas van de Walle

(Michigan State University, USA)

Prof. Deborah Posel

(Director WISER, South Africa)

Dr Ruth Watson

(University of London, UK)

Dr Paul Mathieu

(FAO, Rome)

Dr Piet Konings

(African Studies Centre)

(5)

The Making of Elite Women

Revolution and Nation Building in Eritrea

by

Tanja R. Müller

BRILL

LEIDEN •_BOSTON

(6)

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

LC Control Number: 2004059612

For more information see the Library of Congress website: http://catalog.loc.gov/

ISSN 1570–9310 ISBN 90 04 14287 8

Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

Cover photo: Pupil at Alnahda Elementary School in Keren, Eritrea, 7 June 2000 (photo: Stefan Boness/Ipon)

mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that

the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910

(7)

List of appendices

1 Timeline Eritrea – A brief historical overview 231

2 Texts on women’s rights in EPLF/PFDJ programmes 234

3.1 Overview of data sources 236

3.2 Background information on the UoA 238

3.3 Secondary schools in Etritrea, school year 2000/2001 240

3.4 Survey sampling frame and respondents 241

4.1 Overview of interviewees – Present elite women in Eritrea 242

4.2 Background characteristics of group of 29 female students

at the UoA and survey sample 248

5.1 School enrolment figures and percentages by level, zoba and sex 254

5.2 Visits to five secondary schools in Eritrea 257

5.3 Admittance to the UoA 263

6.1 Survey respondents’ future plans 264

6.2 Survey respondents’ problems at the UoA and beyond 265

6.3 Survey respondents’ gender attitudes 268

(10)

Acknowledgements

As is common in an endeavour like this, I am indebted to countless people and will not do justice to many of them in these brief acknowledgements.

People whose contributions I wish to acknowledge in particular include Stefan Boness in Berlin and Kerstin Lau in Geneva, without both of whom this project would not only never have started, but who helped with and supported it throughout.

Then I sincerely wish to thank Tony Barnett and John Cameron at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, for invaluable advice, guidance and support through all the ups and downs in the research process; I hope they will find their intellectual input done justice to in the final product.

In Eritrea, my thanks go to all the people who made me a welcome guest in their houses and lives, first and foremost the women who shared their histories with me in manifold encounters. I also thank Petros Hailemariam for institu-tional and personal support whenever needed; Dr. Azieb Oghbagebriel for providing the required research permission; and staff at the Faculty of Educa-tion for their assistance. Mesfin from the MoE and Ghebremariam Wolde-michael from the UoA provided valuable help with the statistical analysis.

For their friendship I thank Hibrenigus Terefe and Kidane Girmay, as well as the ‘friends of nature’, in particular Ogbaghebriel Beraki and Uoldelul Gelati. Thanks are also due to Sergey for company during late night drinks; Idris in Nakfa, Abraham in Keren and Biniam in Barentu for their warm welcome; Bereket and Youssuf from next door for logistical support; and Semret for her inspiring coffee ceremonies.

Back in the UK, I wish to thank Norma and Gabino in Norwich for valuable friendship and support, as well as Sarah Hare in London for her hospitality on innumerable occasions.

I am also indebted to the staff of SOAS library for giving me access to classified documents when required, and staff at the Staatsbibliothek Berlin who generously provided me with free office space whenever needed.

(11)

I obviously have not done justice to the many people in Eritrea without whom this research would not have been possible – I hope they will like the outcome.

Finally, I thank Mieke Zwart of the African Studies Centre for putting the manuscript in the required layout.

(12)

Glossary of foreign words

awat na hafash Victory to the masses

baito traditional village council

chador traditional black whole body veil for Muslim women

derg government during Ethiopian revolution (1974 – 1991)

enda kinship group in the highlands

hafar shy hamade Eritrean expression for the NUEW

kebessa Eritrean highlands; plateau

mahber fikri hager ertra Association of love of the country of Eritrea

makalai ailat new migrants to settled highland farming villages

megza’ati colonialism; colonialisation

mehefar to be ashamed

metahit Eritrean lowlands

nabtab ruling clans

restenyat landowning class in the highlands

sewa local beer

shifta bandit shumagulle ruling clans

tigre serfs

warsai new generation of women soldiers in Eritrea

zibib local anis schnapps

zoba administrative region in Eritrea EPLF military hierarchy:

gujelle group of ten fighters

ganta group of 30

hailee group of 90

bottolini group of 270

brigade group of 810

(13)

List of acronyms

AFP BA BBC BMA CCE EDF EEBC ELF ELM EPLA EPLF ERA ESA FGM FoE FPC FSLN FRELIMO GDP GPA GSE HDI HDR HRD IDPs IDTs IMF IFIs INGO IRIN IT MA MITIAS ML

Agence France Press

Bachelor of Arts (used for Bachelor Degree in general) British Broadcasting Corporation

British Military Administration Constitutional Commission of Eritrea Eritrean Defence Forces

Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission Eritrean Liberation Front

Eritrean Liberation Movement Eritrean People’s Liberation Army Eritrean People’s Liberation Front Eritrean Relief Association Eritrean Studies Association Female Genital Mutilation Faculty of Education Four Powers Commission

Frente Sandinista de Liberacion National Frente de Libertação de Moçambique Gross Domestic Product

Grade Point Average

Government of the State of Eritrea Human Development Index Human Development Report Human Resource Development Internally Displaced People International Development Targets International Monetary Fund International Financial Institutions

International Non-Governmental Organisation Integrated Regional Information Network Information Technology

Master of Arts

parastatal organisation founded by ERA to support reintegration and demobilisation, the name stands for a traditional social network for social solidarity

(14)

MLHW MLT MoE MoH MSc NA NGO NUEW NUEYS OAU ODA OMM PAIGC PFDJ PhD RDC SST TPLF TTI UN UNDP UNESCO UNMEE UNOVER UoA US WB ZANU

Ministry of Labour and Human Welfare Medical-Laboratory Technician Ministry of Education Ministry of Health Master of Science National Assembly Non-Governmental Organisation National Union of Eritrean Women

National Union of Eritrean Youths and Students Organisation of African Unity (now: African Union) Oversees Development Administration

Organização da Mulher Moçambicana

Partido Africano do Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde People’s Front for Democracy and Justice

Doctor of Philosophy (used for doctoral degree in general) Research and Documentation Centre

Secondary School Teachers Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front Teacher Training Institute

United Nations

United Nations Development Programme

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation United Nations Mission to Ethiopia and Eritrea

United Nations Observer Mission to Verify the Referendum in Eritrea University of Asmara

United States (of America) World Bank

(15)

Angel of History

My wing is ready for flight I would like to turn back. If I stayed timeless time, I would have little luck.

A Klee painting named “Angelus Novus” shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, 1973: 259

(16)

(17)

Introduction

One of the major themes within the social sciences in the twentieth century was the collective attempt to improve the human condition in (socialist) revolution-ary (mass) movements. At the beginning of the twenty-first century many of these attempts are considered to have failed, often piling wreckage upon wreck-age in the course of their history. Nevertheless, the search remains for alterna-tives to the dominant doctrine of global neo-liberalism which emerged after the end of the Cold War, especially in the face of prevailing poverty in many coun-tries in the developing world. Thus, particularly in the context of societies in the developing world, the potential inherent in revolutions to radically reshape those societies – a transformation commonly envisaged by the revolutionary movement of the day in terms of ‘modernisation’ coupled with notions of social justice – lets them remain intriguing and relevant objects of study.

The example chosen to discuss the relevance revolutions can still have in the globalised world of the twenty-first century is Eritrea, Africa’s youngest state. It came into being as the outcome of a national liberation struggle combined with a social revolution. The potential to reshape the world inherent in a revolution-ary situation is examined through the lens of social change in the status of women in society. This is due to the fact that gender relations played an impor-tant part in the ideology of all revolutionary movements in the twentieth century in the developing world, and particularly so in Eritrea.

In judging revolutions as well as wider processes of modernisation in their wake, the individual is often neglected in favour of the broader picture of creating a new nation, a different society, a more just or modern or progressive social order. After all, revolutions usually involve ‘the masses’ or some form of popular movement, and thus they tend to be judged in terms of their impact on this collectivity, of which an important group are ‘women’. In this study, it will be individuals who come to the forefront. The Eritrean revolution will be judged in terms of its emancipatory effect and the transformations it brought to the lives of individual women who are in different ways part of the elite.

(18)

At the same time, it will place their personal histories into the broader social and cultural context of the Eritrean revolution and nation building process.

The focus is on the time of revolutionary institutionalisation and consolida-tion, the time after the revolutionary movement achieved state power and is in the position to put its political agenda into practice under the conditions of building a new nation. It was ten years in May 2001 since the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) marched into Asmara and became the de facto gov-ernment of independent Eritrea. Thus, the ‘honeymoon period’ which usually follows national liberation can be regarded as over and time has come to take some stock of the revolution’s wider objectives and their implementation – including changing gender relations within Eritrea.

The success of the Eritrean revolution relied to a large extent on the spread of its ideology among a sufficiently large part of the population via a pro-gramme of political education. Within this ideological framework, certain forms of traditional lifestyles were judged as backward and a modernist outlook propagated. An important part of this modernist agenda advocated the equality of women and men by virtue of their joint participation in the revolution.

The main focus in this study is on three generations of present and potential future elite women. It will be largely these elite women who will in the longer term shape the conditions for the majority of Eritrean women – particularly so in the light of the EPLF’s ideological belief that the more female ‘role models’ exist as part of the elite, the easier it will be for ‘ordinary’ women to advance and for entrenched ‘backward’ attitudes towards women to be overcome. In the lives of present elite women contradictions within the revolution are particularly pronounced. The potential future elite women will be the cornerstone for the future of the revolutionary agenda in terms of fundamentally changing the status of women in Eritrean society.

(19)

The central focus, however, will be on a group of young women who were teenagers when Eritrea won its independence and are currently students at the University of Asmara (UoA). In being groomed to become part of the future elite they will be decisive for the process of revolutionary consolidation. In a further step back in time, the experiences of young women in secondary schools will be looked at. The focus here is on ‘traditional’ environments to get some insights into if and how the modernist agenda of the revolution might have modified these environments in terms of opening up opportunities for young women.

This focus on women successful within the system of formal education pays tribute to the fact that as the central tool for women’s emancipation and modernisation – in general as well as in the specific context of the Eritrean revolution – education has been identified.

The challenges these women face and the ambitions they have for their fu-ture will reveal the possible openings (and closures) created for women in the aftermath of the Eritrean revolution in terms of enabling them to occupy posi-tions of decision making in society as well as following their personal agenda of emancipation. In a further step, their personal experiences will allow wider conclusions to be drawn on the Eritrean revolution in general, in particular on how it treads the fine line between authoritarian rule and a democratic society – a balancing act in which so many revolutionary movements have failed.

The book consists of eight chapters.

Chapter one defines the concept of revolution as it is understood in this

study. It identifies gender relations as an important part in the ideology of revolutionary movements in the twentieth century in the developing world and proceeds to examine how women fared in a number of such revolutions.

Chapter two starts with a brief introduction of Eritrean society and

national-ist politics. It then introduces the EPLF as a revolutionary movement before looking in detail at the ideological framework of the Eritrean revolution and its practical implications for women within.

Chapter three briefly outlines the methodology followed to eventually arrive

(20)

Eritrean revolution did indeed create some openings via education for the pre-sent generation of young women.

Chapter five takes the reader one step further back: to the years of secondary

schooling as a decisive stage in the lives of young women when the course is set for much of their future. The remembered experiences of the 29 main student participants during their years of secondary schooling are supplemented by observations and interviews in five secondary schools in present-day Eritrea. The lives of young women are shown to be located somewhere between being academically successful and have aspirations for a ‘modern’ future on one hand, and cultural traditions, the most prominent being early marriage, on the other.

Chapter six looks at present challenges and the future outlook of current elite

women. It shows the lives of former fighters mainly determined by the collec-tivity of the nation, whereas individualised notions of success dominate among civilian professional women. Both groups regard themselves as role models for the future generation of Eritrean women. But they are regarded as such by the dominant political ideology only in so far as their individual ambitions comply with the perceived needs of the nation. For the future, it is envisaged that education will be decisive for women’s advancement. But in the way education is conceptualised the dichotomy between the individual and the wider society inherent in any educational system is largely ignored.

Chapter seven illustrates this dichotomy in returning to the core group of

potential future elite women who at the time of the research were students at the UoA and taking a look at their future aspirations. These 29 women are shown to have ambitions common to young women the world over: a good job and a successful family life. Similar traits are reported among a wider sample of male and female university students who took part in a questionnaire survey. The majority are, however, prepared to pursue their individual aspirations in a way which at the same time benefits the nation.

Chapter eight shows the lives of the participants in this study determined by

two pairs of opposite poles: individualism versus collectivism on one hand – the latter being a legacy of the revolution’s nationalist ideology and citizenship obligations arising from it; and a modernist outlook (visible most prominently in a culture of life-long career) versus cultural traditions (most prominent in early marriage traditions) on the other. It concludes that the Eritrean revolution established a process of modernisation which brought individual freedoms to and created openings for women. These possibilities of personal liberation might turn out to become its most important legacy.

(21)

1

Social change and the status

of women in a revolutionary

society – The context

The following two chapters set the theoretical context into which the subse-quent case studies of Eritrean women are embedded. In this chapter, revolution and revolutionary society as understood in the context of this study are defined. In a further step the standing of women in revolutions in the developing world is being examined.

Revolution has been called a special case of social change (Moghadam, 1997), an attempt “to embody a set of values in a new or at least renovated social order” (Dunn, 1989: 12). Revolutions (at the outset) aim for a combina-tion of social justice and improvement of society (Käufeler, 1988); the latter is commonly described in terms of what can be called modernisation. Nearly all revolutions which took place in the developing world in the twentieth century had such a modernist agenda. This agenda centred on, as Cabral put it, “the building of the people’s economic, social and cultural progress” (Cabral, 1980: 150).1

Modernisation here is understood in its most basic sense: Having its roots in the humanist and secularist enlightenment philosophy of reason and progress (Green, 1997; Hobsbawm, 1962) modernisation is the hope for a better world

(22)

which will come about by “the growth of education (...) moral improvement and

technical development” (Kolakowski, 1990: 221).2

These elements – the strive for social justice, ‘betterment’, modernity – are combined during the revolutionary struggle with an upsurge in the intrinsic ability of people to reassert a history of one’s own, recapture an identity of one’s own and ultimately recreate a society (often in tandem with a nation) of

one’s own (Davidson, 1981a; Selbin, 1993).3_{Above all, revolutions raise the}

question whether human and social conditions need to be as unequal and unjust as they are in a pre-revolutionary context (Dunn, 1989). Two emotions are thus

at the centre of revolution: hope and despair (Kimmel, 1990).4

This characteristic of a revolutionary process – regardless of what the even-tual outcome will be – as a situation in which “possibilities seem to abound” (Selbin, 1993: 1) does make these processes so intriguing. Here the potential of human agency to radically reshape the world suddenly can become reality. In the words of Arendt “what the revolutions brought to the fore was this experi-ence of being free” (Arendt, 1963: 34). The process of revolution creates struc-tural possibilities of transformation that were not present before (Kimmel, 1990).

Revolution has thus been regarded as crucial to the process of modernisation

(Huntington, 1968; Moore, 1967).5_{Moore argues that Western scholars are}

unjustified advocates of gradual change instead of violent revolution (Moore, 1967). The conditions in some developing countries he describes as “the suffering of those who have not revolted” (ibid.: 506). Even though Moore acknowledges that the Russian or Chinese revolutions did not bring “higher forms of freedom” to its peoples than Western democratic capitalism, these revolutions nevertheless created what he refers to as “the possibility of

2_{It goes beyond the focus of this research to engage in a debate on the tribulations of modernity.}

In general the author agrees with Kolakowski that “it would be silly (...) to be either ‘for’ or ‘against’ modernity tout court (...) because both, modernity and antimodernity may be expressed in barbarous and antihuman forms” (Kolakowski, 1990: 12). For many people in the developing world, the promises of modernity mean things as simple as clean water, enough food, a roof over their head and an education for their children.

3_{The concept of creating a space of one’s own was adopted from the following line (echoing}

Virginia Woolf and) written by Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah: “A room of one’s own. A coun-try of one’s own. A century in which one was not a guest” (quoted from Ruth Iyob, 1997a: 149). Even though Farah was referring to his native country, his imagery captures one of the essences of any revolutionary process.

4_{Arendt remarks in this context that the October Revolution in Russia had for her contemporaries}

“the same profound meaningfulness of first crystallizing the best of men’s hope and then realizing the full measure of their despair that the French Revolution had for its contemporaries” (Arendt, 1963: 57).

5_{This link has been disputed by other scholars, one of the most prominent of whom is Tilly, who}

(23)

tion” (ibid.: 506).6_{In a similar spirit, Dunn (1989) argues that revolutions must}

be taken seriously because they represent “profoundly important and in some ways distinctively successful attempts to improve the human social condition” (ibid.: 20).7

In the context of this study, the potential to reshape the world inherent in a revolutionary situation will be examined through the lens of social change in the status of women in society. It has been suggested that “gender relations consti-tute an important part of the culture, ideology, and politics of revolutionary societies” (Moghadam, 1997: 137). Or, to look at it from the other angle, that “the most striking changes” in the status of women have come about “in the context of developmentalist socialist revolutions and regimes” (Moghadam, 1992: 228).8

Moghadam defines two models of womanhood which emerged in the con-text of revolutionary change in the twentieth century. These are what she calls the “Woman’s Emancipation model” (where women’s emancipation is a major goal or outcome of a revolution) and the “Woman-in-the-Family model” (where the family attachment of women is a major goal or outcome of a revolution)

(Moghadam, 1993).9

Even though this definition is analytically too broad in the sense that one can conceive of a revolution which has women’s emancipation initially as a goal but changes its course and thus has a different outcome (Algeria could be a possible

6_{In a wider sense Moore argues that in Western democratic countries revolutionary (and other)}

forms of violence were part of a historical process that laid the conditions for subsequently peace-ful processes of social change; in a similar way, in ‘communist’ countries revolutionary violence has been part of a break with an repressive past and an effort to construct a less repressive future (Moore, 1967: 506).

7_{A paradigmatic example here is the Cuban revolution. It is widely acknowledged that in its}

course a legacy of underdevelopment and social deprivation was overcome – as witnessed for example in the human development indicators published yearly by the United Nations Develop-ment Programme (UNDP) (for a discussion of the Cuban experience see Müller, 1993; Selbin, 1993). However, the Cuban revolution failed to provide “higher forms of freedom” to its people.

8_{Moghadam cites the Bolshevik revolution in Russia as providing “the first historic example of}

sweeping legal reform in favour of women” (Moghadam, 1993: 69), soon to be followed by China. In both cases, it was a mixture of principle (a believe in gender equality) and pragmatism (the needs of the revolution) combined that led to vast improvements in the status of women (Moghadam, 1992: 229) – not unlike in Eritrea as will be shown as this study unfolds.

9_{Moghadam regards as the historical precursor for the “Woman-in-the-Family model” the French}

(24)

case in point here), it is useful in the context of this study to clarify its focus: It centres on revolutions which follow the “Woman’s Emancipation model”: Revolutions whose protagonists “target feudalism, tribalism, or backwardness and recognise the need to integrate women into programmes for development and progress” (Moghadam, 1993: 95) – in short, revolutionary movements which combine a developmentalist orientation with a concept of women’s rights.

The following will define the concept of revolution and revolutionary society in more detail. In a further step, the content of some revolutions in the developing world will be looked at in order to analyse how a change in the status of women became integrated into revolutionary practice.

The concept of revolution

A useful starting point to approach revolution and clarify what is meant by revolutionary society is Huntington’s definition, as he clearly distinguishes revolution from other means of change in political power. For Huntington a revolution is “a rapid, fundamental, and violent domestic change in the

domi-nant values and myths of a society, in its political institutions, social structure,

leadership and government activity and policies” (Huntington, 1968: 264; my

emphasis). Revolutions are thus different from rebellions, revolts, coups and

wars of independence, as all of these do not necessarily involve a change in social structures and values (ibid.).10

Huntington argues from a structural perspective in which modernisation is the cause of revolution. Skocpol – while sharing this structural perspective – in her study of the three ‘great’ social revolutions (France in 1789, Russia in 1917, China in 1911 and 1949) extends the focus to include the revolutionary process. She defines the ‘great’ revolutions as events where structural transformation occurred together with a class breakthrough from below. The latter is based on Marxist understanding which defines revolutions as class-based movements driven by inherent contradictions in society (Skocpol, 1979; Skocpol, 1994).

Remaining for the moment with this structural perspective, part of the es-sence of revolution can thus be defined as a coincidence of radical political transformation and fundamental change in political and social structures in a mutually reinforcing fashion (Skocpol, 1979). Alternatively if a national

10_{Unless this distinction is made, the concept of revolution is in danger of losing much of its}

(25)

tion war is characterised by these features, it is considered to be a revolution.11

Throughout this study when referring to the Eritrean liberation war or “the struggle”, as it is usually referred to among Eritreans, what is implied is a revolution in the full sense of the word.12

Revolutions in the late twentieth century took place in different circum-stances from the ‘great’ revolutions in France, Russia and China. In the context of this study – and with the Eritrean revolution in mind – the typology sug-gested by Hermassi (1976) is worth some elaboration. Hermassi distinguishes between three types of revolutions: The first he calls “democratic revolutions”

(referring to England13_{and France), where the revolutionary agenda was one of}

“liberating a dynamic society and growing economy from an inhibiting political framework” (Hermassi, 1976: 219). The second type he calls “developmental revolutions”, referring to revolutions which “occurred in societies marked by relative stagnation and backwardness, and their aim has been to employ a massive apparatus of state power in order to catch up with developments abroad” (ibid.). The prototype here is the Russian revolution (later reappearing in Eastern Europe and partly China), whose significance Hermassi sees in

the establishment of political control over social and economic affairs, the oblitera-tion of distincoblitera-tions between state and society, and the concepoblitera-tion of state power as something to be mobilised at will for the purpose of changing societal relations (ibid.: 221).

The third type he calls “national revolutions” (ibid.: 226). These are revolu-tions which occurred in developing societies. Because of these societies’ struc-tural position in the global world system, national revolutions could neither carry out the programme of the early democratic revolutions nor fulfil the aims

11_{This is not to deny but rather support the distinction Chabal makes between a national}

libera-tion war and revolulibera-tion. While the former is mainly a military conflict between a nalibera-tionalist movement and a colonial power, the latter, in addition to the overthrow of an existing political state by a counter elite, requires “the ability by the new political masters to establish a radically distinct social, political and economic order” (Chabal, 1983: 188, my emphasis). Especially the issue of ability is crucial here: Revolution implies not only having won power and perhaps already administered part of the country in a ‘revolutionary’ way in that process, but the ability to carry this qualitatively different system through to the post-independence area.

12_{In a broader context it has been argued that a mere violent overthrow of an unpopular or}

colo-nial government could never justify the sufferings armed struggle involves; therefore a liberation struggle worth being called that always involves establishing a new socio-economic framework (and therewith a revolutionary element): “If there had to be warfare, it was to be for revolutionary ends” (Davidson, 1981a: 20; referring to the liberation struggle in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde).

13_{The so called Glorious Revolution in England in 1688/89 could be called an ancestor of}

(26)

of the developmental ones, but aimed to create societies characterised by a synthesis of both agendas (ibid.). The Chinese revolution occupies a linking position between developmental and national revolutions. It was on one hand highly influenced by the Marxist-Leninist agenda of the Russian revolution. On the other hand, it shared many of the features of national revolutions in devel-oping societies which were to come afterwards – not least the need for national consolidation in geographic and military terms and a unifying ideology (which was to become symbolised in Mao’s ‘little red book’), as it was the only of the ‘great’ revolutions which required a long drawn-out military struggle for the revolutionaries to come to power (see Dunn, 1989: 70f).

Revolutions do occur in situations where any road towards reform seems

blocked (though they do not always occur).14_{Or to look at it from the other side:}

Legitimacy of a revolutionary movement requires a state of near total disillu-sionment among the wider population with the ruling authority and prevailing power structures (Turok, 1980: 13). There can be no revolution “except where the previous regime, whether by its weakness or by its viciousness, has lost the right to rule” (Dunn, 1989: 246).

To turn this disillusionment into a revolution needs, however, a further ele-ment: a radical ideological break with what was before. Dunn characterises a revolutionary as somebody who is engaged in creating a better future in being committed not only to changes in the tenure of positions of power, but equally to changes in social stratification (or even the eventual disappearance of it), to improvements in social welfare and to decisive changes in ideology. The latter is not merely consisting of ritual proclamations of certain political and social values that might appeal to the wider masses, but of a transformation in the way in which people’s “experience of living in their society leads them to perceive and to feel about that society” (Dunn, 1989: 229). This last aspect will be shown in due course as having been one of the decisive factors in the success of the Eritrean revolution.

The ‘great’ revolutions provided all subsequent revolutions with an ideologi-cal discourse of revolution. The ‘liberté, egalité, fraternité’ of the French revo-lution symbolised above all a demand for a just political order (Dunn, 1989). ‘All power to the Soviets’ in the Russian revolution symbolised the (in reality short-lived) experiment to set up a revolutionary leadership of proletariat and peasantry (ibid.). Lenin’s dictum that socialism means ‘electrification plus the Soviets’ can be described as the “inauguration of a developmental revolution”

14_{The question why revolutions occurred in some countries and not in others is, however, beyond}

(27)

(Hermassi, 1976: 221). The Long March15_{during the Chinese revolution gave}

birth to the strategy of protracted war. All later revolutionary movements made reference to this discourse in one way or another and adopted, combined and partly expanded its different languages in positioning themselves within a broader ideological framework. Most visible are these pieces of discourse in a revolution’s popular slogans. In the case of Eritrea, the slogan awat na hafash (Victory to the Masses) to this day is written under every official document as the sign-off line.16

The adaptation of a particular discourse became strongly related to concrete revolutionary practice. As Dunn states,

revolutions belong to a tradition of historical action in the strong sense that virtually all revolutions in the present century have imitated – or at least set out to imitate as best they could – other revolutions of an earlier date (Dunn, 1989: 232, my

empha-sis).17

About revolutions in the developing world it has been generally said that successful revolutionaries had – at least until the end of the Cold War and the collapse of many socialist states – remarkably similar ideas about how to remake and modernise their societies, all somehow related to socialism (Colburn, 1994). Socialism was albeit defined differently in the concrete context of each revolution, whose course was shaped by what Kirchheimer calls “‘confining conditions’ – the particular social and intellectual conditions present

at the birth of these regimes” (Kirchheimer, 1965: 964).18

Revolutions in different cultural settings were thus inspired by certain com-mon, universal values. These values included notions of liberation and emanci-pation (often from colonial rule), a right to basic social services, and last but not

15_{The epic withdrawal of the Chinese Communists after having been close to collapse between}

1934-35, during which Mao took over the leadership and led the regrouping and eventual success of the revolutionary struggle.

16_{More broadly, the EPLF adopted certain parts of various revolutionary discourses and}

experi-ences in very pragmatic fashion. Particularly the Front’s propaganda pamphlets revealed that they had been inspired by Chinese, Cuban and Soviet theory and practice. Based on these forerunners the EPLF developed an ideological framework taking account of and corresponding to the particular condition of Eritrea (see Ruth Iyob, 1997b: 659).

17_{Looking at Eritrea, the village councils introduced by the EPLF in the liberated areas provide a}

good example. With strict rules of representation according to class and status, they on one hand draw on the traditional baitos as structures of running village affairs but equally and arguably more so on the concept of the ‘Soviets’ as known from the Russian revolution (even though this term was not used by the EPLF’s leadership). The EPLF’s military strategy, on the other hand, was strongly influenced by Chinese experiences.

18_{Some examples include such geographically and culturally diverse cases as Algeria 1954-62;}

(28)

least changes in the status of former disadvantaged groups – in short, what one

could call promises of (socialist) modernisation.19_{At the same time, each}

revolutionary movement presents a specific case, and a successful ideology of liberation had to develop from the “living reality of living people” (Davidson, 1981b: 160).

The concept of revolution used in this research can thus be summarised as follows: It incorporates the structural conditions which provide the terrain for revolutions to happen, but centres equally on the revolutionary ideology – and ultimately the human agency of the revolutionaries (Selbin, 1993; Selbin,

1997).As MacPherson points out, revolutions in developing countries depend to

a much higher degree on ideology than the ‘great’ revolutions, not least because in most cases these revolutions must virtually create new collective identities.20

Ideology in this context is used with MacPherson in a neutral sense, as a “systematic set of ideas about [people’s] place in nature, in society, and in history (...) which can elicit the commitment of significant numbers of people to (or against) political change” (MacPherson, 1966: 140). As such, ideologies contain elements of explanation of the past, justification of present demands and faith in the ultimate rightness of one’s cause (ibid.).

Revolution thus viewed follows Selbin’s concept of social revolution. It en-tails the “the successful overthrow of a ruling elite by a revolutionary vanguard that has mobilized broad popular support and undertaken the transformation of

a society’s political, economic and social structures” (Selbin, 1993: 11).21_This

definition makes revolution contingent on an attempt to fundamentally trans-form society and stresses the importance of the revolutionary leadership to mobilise broad popular support. Dunn remarks in this context that all

19_{These notions are all present in spirit if not in words in the UN Declaration of Human Rights,}

which after its adaptation in 1948 sparked a debate not resolved to this day between advocates of human rights as a universal concept or a culturally defined, relativist notion. The author would argue for a stance which embraces the universal values of human rights while acknowledging aspects of cultural diversity (see Fox & Hasci, 1999).

20_{In the case of Eritrea, it has been argued by some scholars that an Eritrean identity had to be}

carved out of a previously shared Ethiopian identity, see for example Triulzi (2002). While the author does not agree with this interpretation of Eritrean nation building (as will become clear in due course), it is nevertheless the case that in Eritrea (as well as in other countries in which national revolutions occurred) pre-existing collective identities needed to be transformed in the process. An interesting discussion of part of the history of different collective identities in what is now Eritrea can be found in Trivelli (1998) as well as Tronvoll (1999); for a discussion of religion as the main building block of collective identities in Eritrea see Hussien (1998).

21_{Vanguard here does not strictly refer to the Leninist concept of a vanguard party, but more}

(29)

tions are elitist in the short run. Even if the longer term implications are explic-itly egalitarian, “the process of revolutionary change is one of instruction of the

many by the few” (Dunn, 1989: 7).22_{He traces this back to the French}

revolu-tion which epitomised for the first time a fundamental characteristic of the process of revolution: the anticipation of a future of increasing economic, political and social equality “generated above all by the expansion of educa-tional opportunity and by a steady diminution in the hold of superstition at all levels of society” (ibid.: 6). This quote could indeed have been taken straight from one of the EPLF’s programmatic publications. Above all, it shows the rationalist worldview which underlines modernising revolutionary ideology – relying on the emancipation of secular reasoning from revelation – and ties revolution to the “transformations wrought on the consciousness of ‘the people’” (Lazarus, 1999: 138). What is implied here is the idea of a movement in popular consciousness from “local knowledge to knowledge of the principles of national and social revolution” (ibid.). And, as Lazarus points out, within the modern era it is the nation which has been the site for forging “this articulation between universalist intellectualism and popular consciousness” (ibid.) – so it should come as no surprise that the majority of revolutions in the twentieth century were endeavours in which modernising revolutionary change was com-bined with nation building.23

Eventually, however, for revolutions to succeed, revolutionary agency needs to refer only on one hand to the revolutionary leaders and their ability to present the population with a vocabulary or framework that channels popular vision. On the other hand it needs to refer to the population itself, as people have their own independent context and revolutionary leaders can go no further then the popu-lation is prepared to follow (Selbin, 1997). Indeed, as will be discussed further below, what made the EPLF one of the “most formidable liberation movements in contemporary history” (Pool, 2001: xv) was its “capacity to penetrate society” (ibid.) and its determination “not to reflect its indigenous social base, but instead to displace it with an ideology of ‘Eritreanness’” (Clapham, 1998: 13).

22_{A similar picture is painted by Hobsbawm in relation to the revolutions of the nineteenth}

century, when he writes: “All revolutionaries regard themselves, with some justification, as small élites of the emancipated and progressive operating among, and for the eventual benefit of, a vast and inert mass of the ignorant and misled common people, which would no doubt welcome liberation when it came, but could not be expected to take much part in preparing it” (Hobsbawm, 1962: 144).

23_{Within the EPLF’s ideology, an Eritrean past as a nation was established with the advent of}

(30)

It is in that sense that revolution has been defined by the late Almicar Cabral, a revolutionary leader himself, as “the inalienable right of every people to have their own history” (Cabral, 1980: 143). In a similar spirit, Wertheim points out that revolutions, whether successful or not, always have a major effect on the freedom of people, and

the most significant emancipation generally occurs in the psychological sector. The heightened sense of human dignity and a fresh belief in new social values may produce such a transformation of mentality that this, in itself, may forebode a funda-mental transformation of society. The funda-mental forces released through a revolution may embody its most important effect on a society (Wertheim, 1974: 220).

Within the context of this research, the focus of revolution is moved away from the acquisition of state power towards the commitment to the creation of a new society guided by new values (Selbin, 1993). This makes what comes after the successful overthrow of the old system by the revolutionary movement the arguably much more central task: the countrywide consolidation and institu-tionalisation of the promises of radical change under which these revolutions set out, and the legitimacy of new values and the new state in the eyes of the population at large.

Consolidation and institutionalisation are regarded as two different things: Institutionalisation refers to the establishment of state structures by the revolu-tionary movement which are domestically and internationally recognised. Consolidation refers to what Selbin describes as “winning the people’s heart and soul” (Selbin, 1993: 22). It is the process by which the majority of the population comes to support the social revolutionary project and make it their vision for the future (MacPherson, 1966; Selbin, 1993). In contrast to the com-mon judgement which regards a revolution as successful with its political vic-tory – visible in the assigned dates, for example the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, or the 1959 Cuban Revolution – it is not easy to define when the consolidation process is over. This research – whose central concern is with revolutionary consolidation – will consider the revolution to extend “as long as ideological zeal is needed” (MacPherson, 1966: 140) to bring about the origi-nally envisaged fundamental change.

(31)

In many of the national revolutions of the twentieth century these phases partly overlapped. They tended to follow a common pattern, which can be

characterised as follows:24_{The phase of insurrection is a prolonged period of}

dual power structures, during which simultaneously and gradually the revolu-tionaries expand political participation and build their own institutions (mostly in some part of the country under their control), while they are at the same time

engaged in the actual military struggle.25_{Geographically, these revolutions start}

in the countryside, usually in some remote area well suited to guerrilla warfare but difficult to re-conquer by regular armies. After an often prolonged period of

struggle – and in most cases aided by a favourable shift in external conditions26

– the final collapse of the old regime, the occupation of the capital and the coming to state power of the revolutionary movement take place.

During the revolutionary struggle itself, the revolutionary movement thus concentrates as much or even more on “outadministering” the government as on “outfighting” the regular troops (Ahmad, 1971: 145). As a successful revolution relies on popular support, the revolutionary leaders must in practice demon-strate qualitatively different arrangements which satisfy popular demands for a better society (Miller & Aya, 1971).

To sum up the discussion in this section, a revolutionary society is defined as: A society in which a revolutionary movement came to power with an ideol-ogy based on two sets of values: notions of freedom and liberation on one hand, and notions of social justice – based on a socialist-modernist outlook – on the other. In the process of institutionalisation and consolidation the revolutionary movement is following a holistic agenda of economic change to benefit the whole population and especially the poor; political change towards greater participation of the population and accountability of the government; and social change towards more equality, especially for former excluded or marginalized groups. Revolutionary society is a fluid concept, as no clear boundary exists between where a revolutionary society ends and bureaucratic ossification of once dynamic revolutionary institutions begins (Miller & Aya, 1971). The main challenge for the revolutionary leadership lies in maintaining a high degree of political mobilisation and social egalitarianism when the concrete task of direct

24_{Exceptions from this pattern include Ethiopia (see Dawit Woldegiorgis, 1989; Ottaway &}

Ottaway, 1978; Thomson, 1975), Cuba (see Müller, 1993; Foran, 1997; Selbin, 1993), Iran (see Käufeler, 1988), Nicaragua (see Selbin, 1993).

25_{Davidson provides a schematic overview of what he describes as a five stage military strategy}

by successful liberation movements in their tactics of recruitment and warfare (see Davidson, 1981b: 174).

26_{These conditions have included for example in the case of the former Portuguese colonies in}

(32)

struggle for liberation has given way to peaceful economic and social develop-ment (Davidson, 1978; Rudebeck, 1974).

In the introduction to this chapter it has been pointed out that gender rela-tions play an important part in revolutionary ideology (see Moghadam, 1997). Therefore, the concrete example that was chosen as an indicator to what degree revolutionary momentum is maintained or abandoned after political victory within the process of revolutionary consolidation is the status of women in soci-ety. The majority of societies in which social revolutions took place in the twentieth century were characterised by great gender inequalities. In turn, most revolutionary movements had the emancipation of women high on their agenda. That was equally the case for Eritrea. But before turning to the concrete exam-ple of the status of women within the Eritrean revolution, in a next step an assessment will be given on if and how women benefited from revolutionary processes in the developing world. This assessment will later be used as the ideological background upon which the experiences of Eritrean women unfold.

Women and revolution in the developing world – A history of

unfulfilled promises?

One of the most fundamental changes in “dominant values and myths” (to take Huntington’s definition of revolution literally, 1968: 264) a revolution could bring (or fail to bring) about in developing societies was a change in the status of women in the direction of freeing women from gender oppression.

This was acknowledged by various revolutionary movements which mobi-lised women with the promise of freedom – only to reimpose controls over women’s productivity and reproductivity once the revolutionary leadership gained power.27

A revolution’s triumph (unless it managed to overthrow the old regime in a very short period of time) ultimately depended on successful appeals to women “to supply resources to nourish it” (Tétreault, 1994: 4), especially as women were often primary producers of essential goods in the respective countries

27_{Examples include – to name just a few (and more examples will be discussed in the main text):}

(33)

(Boserup, 1970) and thus crucial to the material and ideological struggles of the revolution.

Revolutions are as much struggles over symbols as struggles over political and economic power. During times of revolutionary warfare one can often see posters or murals of women with a rifle in one, a baby in the other hand – sym-bolising a kind of ‘superwomen’ who combined her traditional nurturing role with her new role as a fighter (Enloe, 1988: 164). But after the war is over, will she be left only holding the baby?

To answer that question one needs to look at the rationale behind the effort of revolutionary movements to mobilise women into the struggle: Was it mainly instrumental because women were seen as highly sympathetic to a revolutionary agenda promising more social equality and because of the need for women’s support, be it as providers of basic necessities like food and clothing or as fight-ers? Or was there a genuine drive for gender equality in society? Part of an answer lies in the kind of revolutionary society that is being built after a revolu-tionary movement comes to power and how (and if) the promises for gender equality become consolidated.

In looking at various revolutionary struggles of the past in different parts of the developing world, some general conclusions on how women fare in revolu-tionary societies can be drawn. These are bound to have some relevance to the struggle for gender equality in present day Eritrea.

On the African continent, two revolutionary movements stand out in claim-ing to put an emphasis on women’s liberation: the movement for the national liberation of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, and the Front for National Libera-tion in Mozambique.

In the 1960s, the most successful liberation movement in sub-Saharan Africa was the Partido Africano do Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC) in the former Portuguese colony of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, and in 1974 Guinea-Bissau achieved independence as the outcome of an eleven year long armed struggle. What was remarkable about the PAIGC was not so much the armed struggle itself, but the social and political achievements in the early liberated areas of the country (very similar to the case of Eritrea). This made its leader, Almicar Cabral, held in high regard and gave the movement its strong appeal, support and legitimacy among the population (Chabal, 1983). The wider ideology of the PAIGC, “simultaneously to pick up arms and to built a new,

nonexploitative society” (Urdang, 1979: 15; my emphasis) included to promote

(34)

than upset the traditional sexual division of labour. Whereas on one hand women were given military training, they were on the other hand primarily employed in support roles while at the same time the importance of child

rear-ing and nurturrear-ing was emphasised (Enloe, 1988: 163).28

Women were in fact quite easy to mobilise as they saw a great opportunity for their liberation in the society the PAIGC proclaimed to build. Some concrete steps were taken in the liberated areas that benefited women, including the reservation of seats for women in every village council and the abolition of forced marriages. But very few women moved beyond traditional gender roles – not for the lack of desire, but to a large extent because men’s attitudes made it quasi impossible (Urdang, 1979). This situation was not fundamentally altered with independence and coming to power of a PAIGC government. Some efforts were made by the new government to encourage women to take up non-tradi-tional professions (ibid.). By the late 1970s some women were indeed occupy-ing economic and government roles to which they never had access before (Enloe, 1988: 163). In the PAIGC’s general ideological framework, however, the strive for social change (including the liberation of women) could never be allowed to hold back the main objective: the national liberation effort and after 1974 the process of nation building (ibid.).

The resulting dilemma women face when demanding their rights in opposi-tion to men in a revoluopposi-tionary situaopposi-tion with a wider objective is described by Helie-Lucas in the context of Algeria:

During wars of liberation women are not to protest about women’s rights. Nor are they allowed to before and after. It is never the right moment. Defending women’s rights ‘now’ – this now being any historical moment – is always a betrayal of the people, of the nation, the revolution, religion, national identity, cultural roots (Helie-Lucas, 1992: 112f).

Something else comes to the surface here: the burden for change in the status of women is firmly placed on women themselves, as in fact has been the case in most revolutionary or socialist-modernist movements. The ideological battle cry for “women’s changing roles” (Randall, 1992: 169) shows a failure to envisage a process of cultural transformation which equally relies on a change in men’s

conscience and attitude (Maloney, 1980).29_{And, as has been pointed out in the}

28_{One justification for not employing women on a regular basis in the fighting force (women}

should fight only when it was ‘needed’ was the official party line) was that enough men were available to fight and as Guinea-Bissau had a small population one could not risk the death of women (the potential producers of population growth) in combat (Urdang, 1979).

29_{This failure goes back at least to the Chinese revolution (which was partly a model for many}

(35)

context of the Cuban revolution but represents a more general truth, “these cultural transformations must begin at the earliest stages of the Revolution, lest they become permanently postponed” (Casal, 1980: 185).

Where does all this leave the quest for more gender equality? As will be shown in the following examples, women’s fight for gender equality in a revo-lutionary context is more successful if a considerable number of women actu-ally did participate in armed struggle. Doing so, they earned some “entitlements to freedom and equality” (Tétreault, 1994: 434) and were seen in a different

light by their male comrades.30_{It was almost impossible to otherwise push an}

agenda of female emancipation through in a revolutionary society in the devel-oping world characterised by male supremacy and where so many other

prob-lems related to poverty and deprivation were considered more urgent.31

A revolutionary movement in which women had a considerable presence and also participated in combat roles was the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO), the liberation movement in Mozambique. FRELIMO started an armed struggle in 1964, and, after long infighting, at a party congress in 1968 took the ‘revolutionary line’ (Isaacman & Isaacman, 1983) in which the strug-gle was seen as part of a wider movement for emancipation of oppressed people. In this context, from 1969 onwards, the emancipation of women received great emphasis. The late Samora Machel, a FRELIMO leader and Mozambique’s first president after independence, put it like this: “The libera-tion of women is a fundamental necessity for the Revolulibera-tion, the guarantee of its continuity and the precondition for its victory” (Machel, 1974: 24). Women were allowed into combat roles and could theoretically rise to leadership posi-tions (though in practice they hardly did). The quest for women’s liberation became one of the most publicised aspects in the socialist reform programme after independence in 1975. Mozambican women were portrayed as a kind of international feminist vanguard (Sheldon, 1994) – not unlike women in Eritrea today which, as will become clear later, does not correspond to how most Eritrean women experience their concrete reality.

30_{The same appears true for war in general, as for example the experiences of women during}

World War I and II in Britain show (Segal, 1987).

31_{It is however not the case that participation in armed struggle necessarily led to more gender}

(36)

The Organização da Mulher Moçambicana (OMM) was quite powerful in advancing a women’s agenda in government and FRELIMO party structures (a construct not dissimilar to present day Eritrea, where the National Union of Eritrean Women (NUEW) plays a comparable role). At the beginning of the 1990s, steps taken to empower women showed results in an increasing number of women involved in political processes. The continuing limitations to women’s progress were described as largely due to deeply rooted patriarchal attitudes especially among male leaders (Sheldon, 1994), a somehow familiar scenario which suggests again that in order to achieve gender equality measures to empower women only go a certain way and that it is as least as important to

change men’s attitudes.32

A commitment to do just that, which needs to include facilitating change in the central area where gender roles are reproduced, the family, was found throughout many socialist countries in the developing world which came into being as the result of some sort of revolution (Molyneux, 1981; 1982; 1984). Molyneux found that indeed women made major gains in socialist developing countries in many areas, as here for the first time their struggle for equal rights was given official state support (Molyneux, 1984). In general, socialist states accepted greater responsibility for the area of social reproduction: Education, housing and other basic necessities were viewed as an entitlement, an approach that strongly benefited women (Molyneux, 1982). Equally, women were en-couraged to join the labour force, but what lagged behind in all socialist coun-tries was their full participation in political life (ibid.).33_{Ultimately, in spite of}

formal legislation, socialist countries failed to alter the domestic relationship and alleviate the burden of household responsibility for women. This failure is related to the roots of socialist theory going back to the writings of Engels and Lenin. It rests on one hand on the belief that the equal participation of women in economic life will lead quasi automatically to wider gender equality (Moly-neux, 1984); on the other hand, that the exploitation of women is related to the general system of exploitation in pre-socialist societies and will cease to exist

32_{Concerning Mozambique, it has been suggested that a weak state in a potentially revolutionary}

society can be bad for women’s emancipation: In the late 1980s, FRELIMO’s support base was so weak that it abandoned its official position on female equality in order to recruit more people from highly traditional groups in society, which had a strong interest in keeping the gender status quo (Tétreault, 1994: 438).

33_{In addition, most socialist states did not permit any autonomous political movements, including}

(37)

with the success of the revolution (Machel, 1974: 34).34_{To sum up her}

observa-tions, Molyneux (1984) points out the following:

While most socialist countries have attempted to encourage the greater equalisation of the domestic labour load, this cannot be achieved without challenging both pre-vailing representations of masculinity and femininity with their concomitant gender-specific roletyping, and the identification of ‘femininity’ with inferior and ‘mascu-linity’ with superior values (ibid.: 87).

This last point will become important later in the context of certain attributes which are ascribed to women in Eritrea within the public discourse on gender.

A useful illustration at this stage is provided by the revolutionary process in Nicaragua, where women’s participation in combat was considerable. They made up approximately 30 percent of the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion National’s (FSLN) combat forces (Molyneux, 1985). This participation of women was part of a wider process of popular mobilisation, but was entered into from a “distinctive social position to men, one crucially shaped by the sexual division of labour” (ibid.: 228) and reinforced by the general machismo ideology. This division was not transcended after the Sandinista government came to power. Women benefited from welfare programmes and legal reforms, but advocacy towards a change in men’s attitude and behaviour was not consid-ered a priority, a fact which hindconsid-ered women participating on an equal basis in all areas of society. In general, policies from which women derived benefits were pursued because they served wider goals “whether these were social welfare, development, social equality, or political mobilisation in defence of the revolution” (ibid.: 245). Programmes for women’s empowerment remained essentially conceived in terms of how functional they were for achieving wider objectives of the state (ibid.: 251).

34_{The main texts on which these assertions are based are Engels’ ‘The Origin of the Family,}

Private Property and the State’, and various statements and writings by Lenin over time compiled in the volume ‘The Emancipation of Women’. Engels argues that the oppression of women came into existence for the same reason and through the same forces that brought private property and the class society into existence. Thus, within socialism “the position of women, of all women, undergoes significant change. With the transfer of the means of production into common owner-ship, the single family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is trans-formed into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair” (Engels, 1972: 139). Building on Engels, Lenin advocates that “to effect her complete emancipa-tion and make her the equal of the man it is necessary for housework to be socialised and for

women to participate in common productive labour. Then women will occupy the same position as men (Lenin, 1984: 69; my emphasis). In a different context he states that “working women

must take an increasing part in the administration of socialised enterprises and in the administra-tion of the state. By taking part in administraadministra-tion, women will quickly learn and will catch up with

the men”(ibid.: 79) (the conceptualisation behind the italicised parts will be encountered again in